Stalking Wonder: Kids on Farms

I’ve written before about the Farm Tots program at South47 Farm, an organic farm just a stone’s throw from Seattle, across Lake Washington. During the summer months the farm runs a program where children can come with their parents (or their aunties/uncles) and learn about the farm. Each week has a different theme and there are crafts projects, wagon rides, crops to be harvested, goats and chickens to be fed and pet.

But the thing I think is even more wonderful, is the subtle impact this program has. These kids—many of whom come regularly—are growing up with a farm. They get to see the crops come into season, they get to pick them. They learn that once the fresh blueberries are gone, we have to wait a whole year for them to come back in season again. They know what the plants look like coming out of the ground.



Why do I think this is important?

Last winter I asked my oldest niece—now four—where she thought oranges come from. I was planning to tell her about California, where her grandmother lives, and about the acres of orange groves and how intoxicatingly sweet they smell when in bloom.

My niece, however, had already figured it out for herself. “Oranges come from Trader Joe’s,” she told me. And she’s right. For better or for worse, that's where her oranges come from.

But there’s a whole story behind those oranges: the trees in the fields, the fruit pickers, the harvest. A slew of people work hard to produce that orange, which my brother then buys and brings home to his daughters. There is hard work, sweat, and hope in the food we eat: hope for a good harvest, hope for a fair price. Nobody goes into farming because it’s an easy or safe job. At the same time, it is one of the most important jobs around.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m taking a six-month permaculture class, and finding it amazing and exciting. Last weekend, in one of the lectures, my teacher asked this question:

What would you do if the delivery truck stopped showing up at the grocery store?

This is part of the reason I take my niecelets to the farm—and part of the reason I have a garden this year. I think it’s important to know where our food comes from, what it looks like, how it’s grown. This is the stuff of life, our lives.

But beyond all that, the farm is just a wondrous place for kids. They love being there.















And perhaps the most wondrous thing of all is that, after playing and running about the farm and getting to harvest their own vegetables, kids feel an investment in their food, an ownership, an excitement about it.

In all honesty, it's the only way I know to get a two-year-old to eat a turnip.

South47 Farm, Redmond, Washington